Diana Palmer - The Morcai Battalion

“A high-octane and gritty space adventure.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Morcai Battalion

The galaxy is on the brink of disaster, the long-awaited truce torn apart by an unprovoked attack. The colony whose residents represented more than a hundred planets has been destroyed, and the new vision for unity in the universe is at risk. Faced with a war that would mean destruction and chaos, one man has stepped forward to lead those fighting for their lives. Undeterred by insurmountable odds, his courage inspires a team—the Morcai Battalion—to battle for the cause of peace…and love.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Glossary

Children were crying all around the chief exobiologist of the SSC starship Bellatrix and the woman in her green Terravegan uniform wanted to cry with them. In ten years with the Tri-Fleet’s Strategic Space Command, Lieutenant Commander Madeline Ruszel had never seen such wanton slaughter.

Terramer had been a trial peace colony in the New Territory of the galaxy, populated by clones of races representing one hundred twenty federated planets. A Rojok squadron had managed to reduce it to a smoldering ball of dust in a matter of minutes. An unprovoked attack against a defenseless continent of colonists. A dream of peace gone black in the sleep of treachery. She glared at the turmoil around her. The legendary code of ethics of the Rojok field marshal, Chacon, had gone up in smoke, along with ten million colonists.

She finished the sutures in a quick cytoplasm job on a young Jebob national and gave him a reassuring smile while she checked his vital signs with the bionic mediscanner built into the creamy flesh of her wrist. The scanner, standard SSC issue, contained its own diagnostic tools, medication synthesizer and modem. Her patient’s thin, blue-skinned face tried to return the smile, but even her strongest painkillers hadn’t assuaged the agony of the massive radiation burns on his young body.

She stood up and eyed her medic teams. “Let’s speed it up!” she called to them, brushing a long strand of auburn hair away from her sweaty temple. “I want this group of pilgrims evacuated in ten minutes!”

She avoided the pressured glares of her team. “I know, I know,” she murmured, “what do you think we are, a bunch of bloody magicians?”

They were working against time trying to patch up what few survivors the shoot-and-strafe air attack had left. Human and alien children wept softly in a nightmare chorus, looking for parents they’d never see again. The children, she thought, were the worst. The radiation was most damaging to young flesh, and of a kind the Rojoks hadn’t used in the early days of the warfare. It was highly resistant to conventional treatment.

She joined Dr. Strick Hahnson at the prefab communications dome that the engineering squad had assembled in minutes, and leaned wearily against the transparent hyperglas.

“We’re running out of morphadrenin,” she told the husky blond human life-science chief. “Some of these younger ones won’t make it, regardless. Strick, what in God’s name did the Rojoks hope to gain by this?”

“Ask their commander-in-chief, Chacon,” he replied harshly. “We’ve got worse problems. The comtech can’t get through to HQ and I can’t find Stern.”

She glanced up at him. “He went scouting for the sci-archaeology group. I had hoped he’d take some ship police with him, but you know the captain. Strick, the Jaakob Spheres were on that ship, not to mention two VIP Centaurian diplomatic observers. The Rojoks may have taken more than lives here.”

He nodded wearily. His blond hair was wet with sweat, and damp splotches made patterns on his green uniform. He looked worse than she felt.

“How many casualties?” he asked.

“About three hundred wounded to lift, if that’s what you mean; and those are just the aliens under my jurisdiction. Human survivors number about two hundred more.”

“Where are we going to put them?” he asked idly, glancing up at the gleaming orange sky where radiation danced in pale blue patterns. “What about that message, son?” he asked the young comtech in the dome.

“The interference isn’t clearing, sir. I still can’t get through.” The boy’s head lifted. “And I can’t raise Captain Stern, either. He doesn’t answer my commbeam.”

Strick glanced down at the scowl on his slender companion’s face. “We’ll give him five more minutes.”

Her pale green eyes swept over the carnage and the ruins of the small jem-hued shops and marble streets to the wooded area beyond. “If anything’s happened to those Centaurian diplomats…” She sighed heavily. “The Council would have had a bloody war of its own holding the Holconcom back, in any case. Now, with two of their own people involved, there’s no way.”

“Which means we’ll finally have a half chance of winning this damned war,” he told her.

“Amen.” She watched the medics loading casualties into the self-propelled transparent ambulifts. “Watch my boys, Strick. I’m going to find Stern.”

Holt Stern strode out of the green tangle of the forest into the clearing where the main settlement had been. He brushed against a spiny moga tree and a ripple of pain shuddered down his arm. Holding it, he glanced around the camp at the neat rows of prefab medical domes where his medical specialists were concentrated.

The personnel were familiar. He knew them. But something about the maze of green uniforms worn by the Strategic Space Command disturbed him. His lapse of memory disturbed him more. It was as if his past life were gone, and only the present remained. And the throbbing in his temple was especially unpleasant.

A rustle of leaves made him freeze at the edge of the forest.

He turned to find the face that went with the husky feminine voice. Madeline Ruszel paused beside a drekma tree. The exobiology chief was flushed with fatigue. Beads of sweat ran down from the mass of auburn waves at her temple to the corners of her full young mouth. She frowned up at him, marring the Grecian delicacy of her face.

“Are you okay?” she asked professionally.

“Yeah. Sure. I just took a pretty hard blow on the temple. Fell over some wreckage.” He glanced toward the forest and a hand went to his brow. “I found the sci-archaeo group. Their ship crashed about seventy meters away. Better send out some lifts. The Rojoks left them in pretty bad shape.”

“Crashed?” Her pale eyes widened. “Stern, the Spheres?”

“I didn’t take time to check,” he said flatly. “The diplomatic observers are damned near dead. Better get moving before they’re all gone to glory.”

“On my way.” She eyed him. “Stern, the observers—two of them were Centaurian, weren’t they?”

He took a minute to answer. The sound of the word gave him sudden chills. “I only saw one. Like I said, I didn’t take time to check too closely. Move out, will you?”

She started to say something, but she turned suddenly and broke into a run toward her medics.

Stern strode quickly toward the comtech’s hut. “Report, Mister,” he said.

“Still no luck, sir,” the boy replied. “Even with my boosters I can’t even weed out the interference between here and HQ. There’s no way to get a message home until it lets up.”